Officially 2015 is the year of the sheep, but it can also be argued that 2015 will be the year of content marketing distribution companies.

To be fair, content marketing has been building momentum for a long time, and the last 5 years especially 

have seen the proliferation of increased investment by companies in content marketing.

 But with the announcement last week of content marketing firm Keywee raising $9.1 million dollars from investors, including a Google executive, content marketing has solidified itself as a booming business.

First Came Content Creation Companies, Next Comes Content Marketing Distribution Companies

I recently talked about the ubiquity of content creation companies with sites like Textbroker,Collective Bias, and Content Equals Money, that offer to match up companies looking for quality content with writers. The next step of course, is what to do with that wonderful content: help spread its wings and fly out into the world.

Of course, by flying, we mean distributing said content across a variety of channels, including social media platforms such a s YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Companies like Keywee position themselves as expert distributors of content.

According to eMarketer, marketers will be spending $4.3 billion on content marketing-tactics, such as native advertising, this year - a 34% increase from last year. And that number is predicted to reach $8.8 billion by 2018.

Keywee: Bearing the Fruits of Raising Funding

According to Keywee founder and CEO Yaniv Makover, the New York Times, Kiplingers, and PureWow are among the 60 brands and publishers that are already using Keywee.

Keywee is just one content marketing distribution company in a sea of many, all of which have been raising big money numbers in the last year or so. This influx of companies includes NewsCred, which last year raised $25 million, Percolate, which got $24 million, and Contently, which also grabbed $9 million last year.

Keywee itself announced $9.1 million in funding, including money from Google chirman Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors.

But what services do they actually offer in the grand chain of content distribution? Their press release toutes that Keywee Solves Content Marketing ROI and Measurement Challenges by Taking a Data-Driven Approach to Find the Best Audiences for Content.

The startup, which is from Israel and is now operating in NYC, uses an algorithm to determine where a piece of content will get the highest engagement, using tools such as language processing, machine learning and social graphs to help match up content with users. They focus on distributing content across paid media such as Facebook, Yahoo, and Reddit.

Facebook Wants an Invite to the Content Party

The New York Times announced that Facebook has been in discussions with several media organizations, including the Times, Buzzfeed, and National Geographic, to host their content on Facebook.

While users of Facebook can currently read content, Facebook thinks that the additional click that opens a separate browser window to the publisher's site takes too long. This is in part due to the increase in mobile usage; users on mobile devices need content to be as streamlined and easily accessible as possible.

There are few details on how the content will be displayed, but this will potentially allow a publisher to reach a new audience on the social media network.

What does this mean for the future of content? Years from now, will a publisher such as the New York Times even need their own website, or will they just be a faceless group whose content can be read on any social media platform? Or taking it a step further, will Facebook eventually just be the gatekeeper for all the news that's fit to "print," with perhaps even smaller news bites being atomized on sites like Twitter?

Do you agree that the year of content marketing and content marketing distribution companies has arrived? Let us know in the comments!